Plan less, learn more

On Monday, we’d a whole day of child-led learning that turned out surprisingly well:

– The boys spent some time observing a huge crane doing major renovation work at a neighbour’s place. We talked about work safety and diligence.

– Vee saw a new poster and recited the times tables

– We revised sounds made by animals / things.

Try creating new learning cards by cutting up a poster, which is clumsy to handle. Small cards are perfect for little hands. Both boys thought it was a great idea.

– We revised Body Parts in English and Bahasa Malaysia

– Jae revised his alphabets

– The boys were engrossed with a new puzzle learning material, Wise Puzzle. This is the updated version of Noddy FunBook used in Shichida class. (To be launched at Owlissimo* soon!)

– Read and speed-read, checked unfamiliar Chinese words using online dictionary (nciku.com), taught Vee how to record the hanyu pinyin and meaning down.

My simple method: stick a post-it at the last page of the book.

– Read up on the significance of Tuesday’s public holiday (Nuzul Al-Quran) – I’ve been doing up a 1-page summary for each public holiday or significant festival, go through with the boys, then leave it on the Montessori shelf for them to re-read.

– Vee wondered why not all Chinese live in China, Indians in India, etc. So I went into a long explanation of how our ancestors migrated, race, dialects, etc. Social studies and human geography.

– Vee enthusiastically practised many songs for a long time on the piano, including modifying Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and transposing a song from F Key to C Key

– Played camping in the house by laying a huge poncho over the coffee table

– Ended the evening with lots of cycling

It’s unbelievable because all of us are slightly unwell, so we didn’t plan to do any proper schooling, explaining the absence of right brain home practice.

I was simply re-organising learning materials and we ended up doing soooo much. How ironical!

Here’s a video clip of him reciting the times tables happily upon seeing the new poster:

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